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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25095319">Puzzle Pieces</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/plsnskanks/pseuds/plsnskanks'>plsnskanks</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Memory Loss</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 05:41:39</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,301</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25095319</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/plsnskanks/pseuds/plsnskanks</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>After the game is revealed to be a simulation and the cast of DRv3 are rescued by the future foundation things are going smoothly minus one thing-</p><p>Tsumugi is missing and so is Ouma's memory.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>53</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Puzzle Pieces</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>For anyone that cares, this might eventually move up a rating or get tagged with being ouma/rantaro ship oriented. But at the moment its less about romance and more about game aftermath.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The world slowly fades into view around him. He sees nothing but what slowly shifts into the form of a wall. A hand, he realizes shortly after as his own, reaches out in front of him. And hits glass with a dull thunk, his knuckles rapping on it lightly.</p><p>He realizes he’s sealed in a pod of some kind, and his chest constricts, eyes going wide. He doesn’t like small spaces. He can’t remember why exactly, but a bolt of primal fear drives through him and before he’s really processed it, his body is launching itself up into the glass, which surprisingly easily gives way and swings up.</p><p>His fists come slamming onto the floor in time to prevent the rest of him from doing so. There's a ringing sensation of pain that vibrates up through his arms and the light edges of fatigue lick at his conscious. The light outside is blinding for a minute and his eyes water as he blinks heavily trying to recover from his disorientation.</p><p>“Are you okay?” A girl with light purple eyes and just past the shoulder length blonde hair approaches him. He looks around to see there are several other pods laid out in the room with him. All with glass lids up. All seemingly empty.</p><p>She notices his staring.</p><p>“Everyone else woke up a while ago, we’re somewhere safe now. Tsumugi seems to have been held somewhere else but, the rest of us are alright aside from, you know. Experiencing what we did,” the words stumble out of her mouth in a rush and he looks at her in confusion.</p><p>“Something wrong, Ouma?” she asks, eyes alight with a soft sort of worry.</p><p>“Who are you?”</p><p>---</p><p>When Kaede leads Ouma back into the mess hall, Shuichi notices there’s a deep cut of worry etched into her brow. Shuichi rises up to meet her and Kaito and Maki are quick at his heels. A weird sort of nervous nausea is apparent in Kaito’s face at the sight of Ouma, but he appears to swallow it down, approaching him and clapping him on the back.</p><p>"Nice to see you up," is all he says.</p><p>Maki stares at him distrustfully.</p><p>“Hello Ouma, are you feeling okay?” Shuichi asks him, watching his face carefully. Ouma was the last to wake up, they’d been advised to let everyone come out of stasis on their own timing. He was also the one whose reaction to their current status Shuichi was most interested to gauge.</p><p>Ouma takes a minute before answering, looking around the cafeteria at the many faces of their past game mates. No trace of recognition or emotion other than dull confusion crosses his face.</p><p>“Hello, where is this? Is it a school?” His voice is soft, softer than what Shuichi is used to from him. As he looks closer at him, he notices a lot of small, subtle things about Ouma are different.Off. Misaligned. His posture is more slumped and defensive, his eye contact sparse and betraying a sense of unease. Overall, he’s more… twitchy.</p><p>It strikes him that Ouma is surprisingly easy to read for once. But maybe that in itself is a farce. Or this is the beginning edge of some game he’s decided to play with them again. Ouma seems to notice he is being scrutinized and shifts uneasily under the weight of Shuichi’s stare. Shuichi relaxes his posture without realizing he had tensed it to begin with, and turns his gaze to Kaede.</p><p>“He doesn’t seem to remember anything,” Kaede explains nervously beside him. “He doesn’t know who we are or where we are or even his own name”. Kaede bites her lip at the last revelation, looking upset.</p><p>Shuichi wonders if her feelings towards Ouma would’ve been much different if she had seen the game past the first round.</p><p>Ouma’s eyes meet Maki’s stare briefly and he seems to flinch away from it.</p><p>“Are you sure this isn’t another sort of game he’s playing?” She asks lowly, eyeing Ouma with distrust.</p><p>Kaede shrugged, “I honestly don’t know if he’s capable of that, I wouldn-.”</p><p>“He’s capable of a lot of things, you’d be surprised,” Maki says, and there’s a strained quality to her voice that Shuichi isn’t quite sure how to interpret.</p><p>“Easy there Maki Roll,” Kaito says, putting a hand on her shoulder gently, and some of the tension leaves Maki’s body but it doesn’t quite leave her eyes.</p><p>“Can someone explain where I am?” Ouma asks again. There’s no trace of anger or annoyance to him, just mild concern and anxiety.</p><p>As Shuichi opens his mouth to explain, the doors on the other side of the cafeteria open and in strolls a short brown haired man flanked by two stern looking comrades. The brown haired man is smiling. Neither of his friends are. Shuichi would guess they all look no more than five or so years older than them.</p><p>“Hello, sorry to keep you all waiting. I assume this has all been confusing and upsetting for you all. Recently we discovered the location of a set of pods simulating a killing game. The game as you know it came to an end. Unfortunately the mastermind was not held in a place local to the area you were in and her whereabouts remain unknown.”</p><p>“I am Makoto Naegi, and with me are Byakuya Togami, and Kiyoko Kirigiri. We are with the Future Foundation and hope we can help reintegrate you back into normalcy over the coming weeks.”</p><p>“Killing game,” Ouma murmured softly to himself, looking confused at the words he just uttered.</p><p>Kaede looked to him again, eyes softening with worry then her hand shot up, “Excuse me?”</p><p>“Ah yes?” Makoto said, looking at her curiously.</p><p>“One of my friends, he seems to have lost his memory coming out of the pods, do you know what happened?”</p><p>“Who, Ouma? Lost his memory my fuckin’ ass,” The abrasive presence of Miu’s voice made itself known in the room. “Little turd snot is probably faking, just let him be.”</p><p>The purple haired girl leaned in and said something lowly to Makoto, who’s eyes widened a fraction as he looked at her and his mouth flattened into a seam of concern.</p><p>“I’ve been informed by my colleague we had issues with a corrupted avatar profile. We have an AI program aiding in reconstructing the profile, but it’s dubious as to what the outcome will be at the moment.”</p><p>“So he could be like this indefinitely?” A cool voice asked.</p><p>Shuichi was surprised to see it was Rantaro that had spoken. He hadn’t said a thing since he had awoken, coming into the mess to sit deep in thought away from the others.</p><p>“Hopefully not, we have our best and brightest working on it,” Makoto said, smiling in a way that seemed subtly strained.</p><p>“But yes, he could be like that indefinitely,” the one labeled as Kiyoko said. Her eyes were cool and calm, but Shuichi couldn’t help but notice she looked a bit sad.</p><p>“I see, thank you,” Rantaro cast a long look over at Ouma and then sat down. Curious, Shuichi found it, the interest that he took in someone he’d barely known throughout the game, at least, as far as they were aware.</p><p>---</p><p>The Future Foundation had accommodated them with enough rooms that people could sleep alone or with others if needed. The rooms locked or unlocked at will from the inside and each of them was provided with a document clarifying their past and the known status of their relatives and other close relations.</p><p>As for everyone in the game together, they had been in the same class at Hope's Peak. It was dubious as to how they had all ended up in the game at the moment, the foundation was still investigating that.</p><p>As they had walked towards the rest quarters, Shuichi had briefly explained their ordeal to Ouma.</p><p>“So we were in a virtual game where you killed people so you could leave?” Ouma said, pondering on the concept.</p><p>“It sounds like nothing when you know it’s just a simulation, but we didn’t know that,” Shuichi said.</p><p>Ouma nodded slowly. He couldn’t, in truth, understand the gravity of what the others had been through, and supposedly he himself too. But he could see the effect of it on the faces of those around him. No one in that room had looked like they were free of guilt or pain.</p><p>Ouma glanced at his document. He had apparently been an orphan, had roamed with a group of ten he considered family, all of them loved games and pranks. Status for all unknown, it seemed, except…. He squinted at the picture of the boy who had asked about him, Rantaro.</p><p>They knew each other before somehow. Had “A close interpersonal relationship that continued into the academy”. He wondered what that meant. Maybe they would have time to talk later. Though the others tried to hide it, Ouma could sense a quiet resentment about them, directed at him.</p><p>He wasn’t sure what he had done to earn that, and a part of him was afraid to ask. He hoped that maybe Rantaro was someone he wouldn’t have that history with. Otherwise it would be a lonely few weeks here.</p><p>“Are you alright Ouma?” the girl called Kaede asked him. They had reached the rest quarters, the five of them were standing together in the common area. The one with the short blue hair called Shuichi. The girl that glared a lot, Maki. The loud one, Kaito. And the nice one, Kaede. That’s how he sectioned them out. It made him smile to himself a bit.</p><p>Ouma sat down in a cushioned chair set behind him, putting down his documents on the coffee table in front of him.</p><p>“Reading all this knowing it’s supposed to mean something to me, but not understanding what? It’s confusing. What was I like in the game?”</p><p>Four versions of discomfort appeared on each of the four faces looking at him. Maki’s face tinged dark with anger, and maybe even the smallest bit of regret.</p><p>“You were…” Shuichi began.</p><p>“Annoying,” Kaito finished for him. “And dangerous, but you did the right thing in the end.”</p><p>“I only knew you for the first round but you were, animated… if a bit rude,” Kaede said thoughtfully.</p><p>Maki only regarded him quietly, not speaking.</p><p>“We spent some time together Ouma,” Shuichi said softly. “You were smart. You didn’t trust anyone, so no one could really trust you. You sabotaged a lot of things in the game towards the end. But also at the end of the game you…”</p><p>Shuichi trailed off unsure of how to continue and how to completely and fairly capture Ouma in one sentence.</p><p>“You got people killed,” Maki said without anger or hate. Just as if she was stating a fact.</p><p>“Maki that’s not-,” Kaito cut in.</p><p>“True?” Maki said, eyes flashing dangerously.</p><p>“It’s not the whole story, and it’s not fair for you to-,” Kaito shot back before cutting himself off.</p><p>Ouma looked between all of them. Maki was sitting tensely, Kaito looked uneasy and frustrated, Kaede looked bewildered, and Shuichi was looking at him deep in thought. The silence stretched as no one knew how to continue, or maybe, no one wanted to.</p><p>Shuichi rubbed the bridge of his nose in exasperation, “Ouma, we can’t fairly tell you the truth behind your actions or what you meant by them because we don’t know. None of us did. The only person who knew was you.”</p><p>“Maybe they have access to a recording of the game,” Kaede said, speaking more to herself than to everyone else. “I think everyone would enjoy the benefit of knowing the full happenings of the game.”</p><p>Kaito sighed, “As if everyone wants to relive that.”</p><p>“Maybe some do, it can’t hurt to ask,” Shuichi said.</p><p>“And in Ouma’s case, it’s the best we can do in place of his missing memories,” Kaede said brightly, looking to Ouma with a hopeful smile. Ouma returned it back cautiously.</p><p>“I think that's all we can really cover today, then,” Shuichi sighed, looking down at his own documents. Nothing there that he didn’t already expect.</p><p>“If that’s all then I’m gonna find a room and hit the hay,” Kaito yawned as he stretched out his arms behind his head.</p><p>“I think it would benefit us all to do that,” Kaede said, looking around the room at everyone.</p><p>Ouma stood, gathering his documents and followed with everyone as they approached the elevator. He stood calmly, turning over the pages of the document again, skimming it through when the elevator pinged and the doors opened. He waited a moment, finishing the paragraph before looking up and into the open space of the elevator.</p><p>Something about stepping into the small confined space with the ceiling so near and the walls so close, had Ouma freezing up. He remembered the pod dimly. Right. Small spaces.</p><p>“Well?” Kaito looked at him expectantly.</p><p>Ouma looked at the waiting door. “I’d rather take the stairs. I don’t- I dont think I like closed spaces.”</p><p>A flash of raw guilt crossed Kaito’s face. He looked stricken and sick and Ouma wanted to reach out to comfort him.</p><p>Kaede looked over at Shuichi and Maki who likewise looked uneasy, concern and confusion plain on her face.</p><p>“It’s alright Ouma, I’ll walk with you up the stairs.</p><p>“It’s not necessary, I-” Ouma stopped himself as Kaede wrapped elegant fingers around his arm and tugged him anyways. She smiled at him warmly.</p><p>“We’ve been stuck in a pod for a while now, I think we could both use the exercise.”</p><p>As the elevator doors pinged shut they walked up the stairwell together in uneasy silence.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Insp for title: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7bQGM14mJI</p><p>Come talk to me on my tumblr of the same name if you have ideas or critiques. Or just chat with me in comments.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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